gardening

Rhubarb My Rhubarb Not only did I get a vigorous rhubarb patch when I bought this house, I got a rhubarb patch with history. Apparently, mine is patch semi-famous in the neighborhood for its sweetness. Several people have pointed out my rhubarb patch and commented on this. But the true defender of the rhubarb...
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Blooming Lilacs and a Runny Nose I have fifteen-foot-tall lilac bushes running down one side of my property line, and they’re gloriously in bloom this morning. It’s not eight yet, and the temperature is a balmy, sitting-on-the-porch-in-shirtsleeves sixty degrees. The sun is shining. The grackles are searching for bugs in the grass by the...
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Snow on the Lilacs Good thing I didn’t plant the tomatoes on Friday, when the sun was shining, when it was 70 degrees and my apple trees were blooming and the lilacs were this close to opening. Good thing because today it’s snowing. Snowing like winter, big fat wet flakes falling outside my window,...
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Another Day, Another Garden Bed Woke up this morning to sunshine, which was welcome. Although come to think of it, yesterday was sunny, it was just intermittently snowing and hailing through the sunshine. But this morning, blue skies and happy dogs. A good way to start a Sunday. Planted one more raised bed today....
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A Perfect Rain We’ve had two days of perfect spring rain. No downpours, just soft, soaking perfect rain. For those of you who don’t live in the West, it’s important to remember that we only get 14.5 inches per year, on average, and the past couple of years we haven’t even gotten that, so...
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Everybody Likes Cake, Part 2 Yesterday I moved a dumptruck load of compost into my new raised beds. I do not recommend moving a dumptruck load of compost by oneself, especially if one is, as I am, a small-ish woman who is no longer the strong thing she was in her twenties. It was...
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Forsythia and chickens It was sort of a crappy day here in Montana … weather looming, dogs digging up the weed-barrier-cloth I laid around the soon-to-be-raised-beds and shredding it all over the yard, and I was just off all day. So I did what all good Americans do when feeling out of sorts, I...
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Garden Update I have sprouts! Two of the five tomatoes have sprouted, and the thyme seems to be coming up as well. The grow lights are on and as always, I’m weirdly surprised that seeds actually sprout. While avoiding war coverage last night, I stumbled across a rerun of my new favorite show, Ground...
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Gardening update It was a fruitful weekend here in the garden. I’m building a somewhat elaborate traditional kitchen garden with raised beds, and this weekend I got it all marked out with stakes and chalk line, and then today I dug six of the eight beds. The other two, which I suspect will be...
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The dirt of my dreams. Of my dreams! We’re having a thaw — today was gorgeous, sixty-five degrees, sun shining, a little windy but then again, this is Livingston and we’re used to wind. So outside I went, spading fork in hand, to turn over some dirt. Now my last garden, in California, was...
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